1864.] 
445 
except the black oak, have I ever found the kind of gall which pro¬ 
duces aciculata: —Quercus tinctoria, (black oak, by far the most abun¬ 
dant of any,) alba (white oak), rubra (red oak), macrocarpa (burr oak), 
imbricaria (laurel oak), and prinus variety discolor (swamp white oak.) 
Q. coccinea (the scarlet oak) is believed by my friend Dr. Fred. Bren- 
del, to be a mere variety of Q. tinctoria, ( Trees and Shrubs of Illi¬ 
nois, by Dr. Brendel, Trans. 111. State Agr. Soc. Ill, p. 596,) but it 
does not, so far as I am aware, occur in this vicinity. The identity of 
Q. tinctoria and Q. coccinea is an important fact, because Osten Sacken 
allows that his Ggnips quercus coccinese, bred by him from Q. coccinea, 
is scarcely distinguishable from G. q. spongijica, bred by him from Q. 
tinctoria, and only separates them on account of the supposed distinct¬ 
ness of the galls from which the two insects were bred, and the sup¬ 
posed distinctness of these two so-called species of oak. {Proc. Ent. 
Soc. Philad. I, p. 247—8.)* 
On May 17th, 1863, I visited the above described group of black 
oaks, and although their leaves were only about | grown, I noticed, in 
addition to several of last year’s dry and brown oak-apples, a very great 
number of green and freshly formed ones, many of which had attained 
their full size. On cutting a few of them open, I found the larva of 
the Ggnips about J grown. Some of these galls had the terminal nipple 
attributed to the gall of sjpongifica by Osten Sacken, some were smoothly 
spherical as the gall of aciculata is described by the same author, many 
had several nipples scattered irregularly over their surface, and 2 or 3 
had as many as 12 or 14. The few I cut into had a rind or skin as 
thick as that of the normal gall of aciculata. I noticed a single speci¬ 
men which was irregularly lobed like a common tomato. 
On May 24th some of these galls contained full-grown larvae, and on 
May 25th I found in several of them 9 pupae. On June 4th I opene<I 
several galls gathered May 24—5, and found in them some larvae and 
pupae, and one S and two 9 imagos of G. q. sjpongifica O. S. Shortly 
afterwards I collected about 100 galls, as they were beginning to get 
Of the four other species of oak known to occur in Illinois—q. obtusiloba 
(post-oak), q. nigra (black jack or barren oak), q. castanea (yellow chestnut 
oak) and q. palustris ( pin oak )—the two first are confined to Central and 
Southern Illinois, so far as is hitherto known. 
